Freshly Tastemaker: Meet Chef Zach...

Freshly Tastemaker: Meet Chef Zach Jarrett, An L.A.-Based Minimalist

Meet our first Freshly Tastemaker, Chef Zach Jarrett. As part of our exciting new chef partnership program, Zach helped inspire several dishes on our menu, including the Grilled Herb Chicken with Swiss Chard. Zach is all about fresh, whole-ingredient food that tastes as close to its natural state as possible. He’s also a big proponent of “whole animal butchery” – a style of butchery that uses all parts of an animal. Read Zach’s story here.

Zach Jarrett, Los Angeles, CA.

Minimal manipulation. Call it the backbone behind Chef Zach Jarrett’s signature rustic palate, which he describes as “throwback American nostalgia” by way of farmer’s market stock, nature scraps, and the principle of honoring the purity of whole foods. The Brooklyn raised butcher, currently at Alimento and previously the chef de cuisine at L.A.’s minimalist SQIRL, first branded himself at the fresh meat and charcuterie house, Salt’s Cure. There, he fleshed out the whole butchery program, using all parts of an animal and leaving nothing to waste.

Zach’s Grilled Chicken with Spaghetti Squash Cakes and Swiss Chard.

Jarrett would drive up to the Bay Area, load up with an order of animals (eight pigs in the early days, three once the restaurant found a shipping company) then drive back down to L.A. And though a Cordon-Bleu graduate, he picked up his chops from a combination of YouTube videos and a 3rd generation French butcher who taught him the trade of “old world butchery knife skills.” Primed in how to get all the essential meat cuts, everything that wasn’t used for a big pork meal was shaved into bacon, ham, and bologna – American charcuterie at its finest.

Today, Jarrett continues to use the bare minimum of ingredients and ensures food tastes like itself – a pea dish has to taste like peas, he insists. In his downtime, he visits farms to form connections with the locals, and loves a good hike. In true unvarnished fashion, his favorite foods exude comfort and no frills: He’ll take a Brooklyn-style dirty water dog with sauerkraut and white rice doused in any sauce, thank you very much.